


interludes

by Virareve



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Arthuriana, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drabble, F/M, Inspired by Interstellar (2014), King Arthur AU, Pregnancy, Roommates, Size of chapter chaotically varies, The Last of Us AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:27:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 16,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22824838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Virareve/pseuds/Virareve
Summary: Drabble/one-shots dump.Chapter 13: Let her go. Interstellar AU.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 154
Kudos: 201





	1. Modern/University AU: Jaime helps university friend Brienne get home for Septmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime helps university friend Brienne get home for Septmas

“Milady, it seems we’ve hit the end of the road.” Jaime smirked, leaning against his Valyrian sportscar. His eyes studied her against the backdrop of the lit tarmac. 

Brienne tightly clutched the duffle Jaime had brought her. “And what about you? What are you going to do for Septmas if I’m not here?”

He shrugged, a surface-deep smile taking over his face. “Likely whatever charity festivities Tywin deems important for Lannister repute.” His face was sharp then, tinged with the cynicism she had known him once to cling to. 

Brienne couldn’t stand seeing him distressed this way. She stepped forward, his eyes narrowed. She stepped closer and grasped his hand in one of hers. 

“Come home with me,” she said.

His face softened, falling back into the Jaime she knew, before he shook his head. “Brienne this is about you being home with your family. You-“

 _“But you’re my family too!_ ” She let out in a rush. Jaime stopped, his face gone slack. She took a deep breath. “You are family to me, Jaime, you’re my best friend, I couldn’t imagine my life without you in it. And I know if you go back to Casterly Rock this Septmas, you’ll just be miserable. Come home with me. I know my dad won’t mind. I’ll show you the island. We can go see the Seven Winter’s night scene the elementary school children put on for the island. And the houses near the coast that go all out decorating for the tourists. I’ll show you the sept in Tarth. I know that sounds stupid but I swear its more beautiful than St. Baelor’s. We’ll-“

“I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you string more words together now then you have in our whole friendship,” Jaime interrupted her with a grin, “but okay.” The hand she clutched in hers turned to interlace their fingers and he gave her a look. One she had seen before at the end of late night study sessions, nights on her couch and too early mornings spent companionably walking their drunk friends home. It held many layers of meaning she didn’t understand; that she was unsure she was ready to decipher. 

Brienne felt breathless.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he nodded, “let’s go to Tarth, show me your island, show me that meadow you talked about as a child, show me that underground waterfall you found when you were thirteen, take me to the springs at the summit your mother used to take you.” His words were coming out in a rush, but his hand held hers tightly. “Let me meet the man who made you you. And that Goodwin fellow who taught you that mean right hook. If you want, I’ll go with you when you visit your mom, Galladon’s, Arianna’s, and Alysanne’s graves like you do every Septmas night because you don’t have to do it alone if you don’t want to.”

Brienne felt her face heating, every promise of his inviting deep, feelings of unexplored, unidentifiable emotions. When Jaime stopped, panting slightly after his monologue, she moved backwards and tugged his hand with her. 

“Well come on then, we’ve got a plane to catch.”

Jaime beamed. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted 21/2/2020


	2. Modern AU: Jaime returns to Brienne after leaving her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU. Jaime finds out that Brienne gave birth after he left her for Cersei. All is not well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is definitely taking from the GOT S8 universe

“I can’t absolve you of your sins, Jaime,” Brienne said, pushing herself up from the settee in his hotel room. “Before this might have been okay. I might have had room to help you heal but I can’t anymore. Not with Kit in the picture.”

The baby mentioned laid sleeping against Brienne’s front where the mother had fastened her into her sling. 

“Brienne,” Jaime tried, “I’m sorry. I was stupid. I was a fool. Please. I left Cersei. Truly. I-“

“You could have come back,” she whispered, voice carefully fixed, “but you didn’t.”

“What? No. I’m here. I’m here,” he repeated, “Brienne, I’m right here.”

“After nearly a year.” Brienne frowned at him. “Because you heard. About my daughter. And I’m not here to forgive you because once I do you’ll just go running off again. You want to be in Kit’s life? What about when she wants to be in yours?”

“She’ll have me,” he pleaded, “every graduation, every recital, every day you’re too tired to take her to school. I’ll be there. For you and her. I swear it.”

“How many promises have you made to Cersei since you went back to her? Ten? Twenty? You made me believe you once, but where were you while I grew with her in Winterfell? Where were you when she was born? When she gave me her first smile?” 

“Brienne,” Jaime tried but every word from him seemed to push her further, “I didn’t know. I swear had I known I would have been there. I was ashamed. I thought you could do better than me. I thought you’d be better without me around.”

“Over a year ago, you came North and made me believe that you were done with Cersei, that you were a changed man, and I let you have me. All of me. All those parts I’d been too afraid to let someone see? I laid them bare before you. Because I thought. _This is it._ and what did you do? You left, Jaime, and you went back to Cersei. And what did you do now that you found out that I had your daughter? You left Cersei. I thought there was good in you, that it was only the messiness between you and your sister that kept you from being the man you were meant to be, but I realize now that you’ve been making a choice. And I can’t stop you from making the same bad calls over and over again but I can protect my daughter from being your collateral damage.“

“Brienne,” he tried, “please, I love you. What do I have to do to make you believe me?”

Brienne shook her head.

“Nothing. I believe you.”

Jaime relaxed, briefly, but realized her stone cold expression had stayed.

“And I know that love isn’t enough for you. Love won’t stop you from running. It didn’t stop you from running from Cersei. It didn’t stop you from running from me. It didn’t stop you from leaving Myrcella and Tommen behind to come to me. It wouldn’t stop you from running from Kit if I gave you the chance.”

“If?” He asked, breath freezing on the conditional.

Brienne inhaled and held him with a grim look.

“This is going to be the first and last time you see your daughter.”

“No,” he shook his head, “No. You can’t make me.”

“You’re right,” Brienne agreed, “because I’m not going to, but I know that because you love me and because I hope you love our daughter, you’ll leave us alone.”

He wanted to fight her, the same way he had with Cersei to be allowed into their two youngest children’s lives but Brienne wasn’t fighting him with fire. Her face was fixed in the stone cold determination of an executioner. Her bottom lip trembled. 

Jaime felt the tears springing to his eyes then as the weight of her truth set into him. He knew it in his bones that he would listen. That if there was any vow he would keep it would be this and yet. 

“Will you tell her about me?”

Brienne nodded. 

“Only the truth.”

It must have been his expression but she softened and admitted.

“Only the good that I believed and that I still believe is the real you. But not until she asks and not until she’s older.”

“How old?”

“Old enough that she’ll understand the price of loving you should she choose to allow you into her life.”

His face crumpled and Brienne imagined it the look of a porcelain doll falling head first into the floor. 

She continued.

“But old enough to know that you loved her so much that you chose to let her live without you.”

“Brienne...” he tried but the words garbled in his throat.

She looked at him then, truly meeting him eye to eye and let all her emotions come to the surface. He thought he could see them all. Pity for the man he could not be. Love despite their tumultuous history. Weariness for all he had put her through. 

She stepped close to him and raised a hand to his face, resting it lightly to his jaw. Closing his eyes, he softened and pressed against it. 

“Please,” she begged, “don’t call me. Don’t text me. Don’t contact me. Don’t ask about me.”

He nodded his acquiescence against her palm.

Brienne released a deep watery exhale and he opened his eyes to find that her own face held mirroring tear tracks. 

“Thank you, Jaime,” she said, leaning forward to briefly kiss his cheek. 

He turned his head, catching her lips with his and pressing firmly. His hand raised to caress the outline of their daughter in the space between them.

Brienne didn’t push him away and lingered in the kiss, unmoving. But when Kit sighed mid sleep she pulled back, looking pained. 

“I should go,” she announced and leaned down to grab the diaper bag at her feet. 

Without looking back, she hoisted the bag against her side and used the other arm to drape protectively over their daughter. 

“Her name?” he called out.

She stopped at the door.

“Kit’s. I don’t even know her whole name.”

“Kit,” she murmured into the fragile air, “is a nickname. Sansa’s boy Ned started it. Called her the kitten to his grandma’s Cat. Her name is Catelyn Josalind Tarth.”

“Josalind,” he tried out, “it’s a nice Western name.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“And Kit,” he said again, feeling the short sound run against his mouth, “will be a nice name. No connotations.”

He could see her nod as she walked out. The door shut softly behind her.

“Good-bye, Brienne,” he said to the closed door. 

His legs gave out and he collapsed onto the floor.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted 24/5/2020
> 
> Had fun writing this on my phone. This one is definitely a bit choppy. It was written on the fly from a spur of the moment muse and I've fallen in love with it as it is. Will likely tie this in to something else later. Thank you for reading. 
> 
> -Vira xx
> 
> PS-as far as I'm aware, Josalind is a rarely mentioned name in the ASoIaF universe, so I've decided that its from the Westerlands. I wanted something vaguely reminiscent of Joanna without using it specifically. Jocelyn, I believe is a Stormlands name and since the names are incredibly similar, Josalind may be a stormlands name but since there's not enough to make an actual connection...well...¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	3. Apocalypse AU: The Last of Us remix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime doesn’t know what happened at the Red Keep but he's sure it didn't end well. 
> 
> The Last of Us - AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't actually played video games on a console since Lego Star Wars II on the Playstation 2 around fifteen ago and my only claim to video game experience now is Animal Crossing Pocket Camp on my cell. I've always been fascinated by the plot from the video game The Last of Us and while I'm having a lot of feelings right now about current news in the world, in my country and in my families' home countries and how it affects those I care about and myself, I found myself in the mood to write an apocalyptic drabble to deal with my emotions. Heh.
> 
> Please enjoy. 
> 
> -Vira xx
> 
> PS-If you do know the video game, Lions are my hack alternate for the Fireflies haha.

They don’t talk until night when they finally make camp.

“My father,” he starts.

Brienne cuts him off with a grunt.

“Had other people. He didn’t need you.”

The look she gives him makes him look away to grab another bite of their measly rations. 

It’s the most they ever say on the subject. 

There hasn’t been a source of universal communication devices since internet and cell services couldn’t be maintained in The Fall. Not with all the Others running around and infecting or killing every person in the vicinity. So it’s not like he can call back and confirm her story. 

He doesn’t know what happened back in King’s Landing. The last thing he remembers before the surgery was going under in a sterile operating room. The next time he opened his eyes, he was in an offroader with Brienne going right next to what used to be the Kingsroad. The dirt off to the side much smoother than the cracked slurry seal of the decaying, fourteen lane highway-a previous pride and joy of the long gone National Infrastructure Committee . 

Brienne gives him silence. Never speaks a word of what happened after he went under and without even saying it, they silently agree that the next step in their aimless journey is to head to the Eyrie, where the Arryns are fabled to hold court in their ancient castle turned compound and where the faintest of rumors suggesting Sansa Stark’s presence have floated through the air. 

But Brienne, for all her newfound skills in secretkeeping doesn't sleep well at night. She hasn’t slept well since they left King’s Landing. Sometimes he has to wake her up when she gets too loud and he fears she’ll attract something she shouldn’t. Some nights she whimpers quietly and all he wants to do is wrap his arms around her. She woke up the one time he tried and he didn't have a way to explain himself so he keeps to his sleeping bag until she begins to scream. Then there are the nights that she calls for him. And he knows, something happened in King’s Landing. Of course it did, his father would never release his golden heir to some nobody from some backwater island in the South. His father had dreams for him. He was sure his father wanted him to be the face of the Lions and have Jaime lead on when he couldn’t, enticing those left to come to the Red Keep and submit to Lannister dictatorship for the chance at immunity. 

But things are different now. The sounds she makes in her sleep, the whispers she confesses in his ears as they are forced to finally huddle together as the temperatures descend lower, they all begin to paint a cold truth.

He’s ashamed to think that after all this time he thought he had his father all figured out. Cersei always called him the stupidest Lannister.

Jaime gave up a hand for Brienne, and she gave up her innocence for him. 

Now Brienne cries in her sleep and calls for a father who long died to save her. She whimpers for Catelyn who’s long gone to the Others. And she calls for Jaime who holds her tighter. 

It’s the only comfort she accepts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted 31/5/2020
> 
> If you are unfamiliar with the video game, in the plot line one character saves another from having a part of their brain cut out for study which would have effectively killed said character (according to plot description in the wiki). (As a previous neuroscience researcher, I can definitely say that it actually depends on which part of the brain is being extracted and how large a portion of the brain being cut is but let's ignore that.) 
> 
> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Hopefully I can get up the sequel I have for the previous drabble soon, but it's nearly four thousand words long and I think I've re-written it three times now. *facepalm* I may post it just to spite myself.


	4. Modern AU: Letters Never Sent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unsent Letters from Kingsguard's Lord Commander Jaime Lannister are leaked to the press.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things to know: 
> 
> Geronimo=Goldenhand 
> 
> Based off (and taking dialogue from) this scene from the show The Young Pope which I have NOT seen but this clip has always stuck out to me as one of my favorite film pieces of all time: https://youtu.be/DGkyDSM-JFc

**_King's Landing Chronicles, Issue 1011_ **

Excerpt from page 2:

Love Letters from the Lord Commander  
By Pia Waters

Once thought the coldest, cruelest man in the Six Kingdoms, unsent letters from the head of the royal Kingsguard’s Lord Commander shed light into the enigma that is Jaime Lannister, and reveal that he is not so much a mystery as he is a man with his own inner turmoils and a love long gone. 

Content leads royal experts to believe that the letters were penned sometime after he was reinstated to the Kingsguard, following the execution of Dowager Queen Cersei, his sister, for plots against the crown. (This was the last time state sanctioned capital punishment was permitted before 'Ned's Law' was enacted and banned capital punishment throughout the six kingdoms.) Readers will also notice the subject of the letters does not appear to be the late Queen, his alleged lover for most of his career. Many are surprised by the emotional depth thought nonexistent in the man the press popularly dubbed _the Kingslayer_ but King Tommen and the newly coronated Queen…( _Cont. on Pages 5-7_ )

* * *

**_King's Landing Chronicles, Issue 1011_**

Excerpt from page 7, The Last Letter:

 _What is more beautiful, my love?_ _  
_ _Love lost or love found?_ _  
_ _Don't laugh at me, my love. I know it._ _  
_ _I'm awkward and naive when it comes to love._ _  
_ _I ask questions straight out of a pop song._ _  
_ _This doubt overwhelms me and undermines me, my love._ _  
_ _To find...or to lose?_ _  
_ _All around me, people don't stop yearning._ _  
_ _Did they lose or did they find? I can't say._ _  
_ _A motherless child, who is raised by a heartless father, has no way of knowing._ _  
_ _He lacks a first love. The love for his mother and father._ _  
_ _That's the source of his awkwardness, his naiveté._ _  
_ _You said to me, as the snow whirled down on us in Winterfell, "Stay."_ _  
_ _But I didn't do it. There, my love, is love lost._ _  
_ _That's why I've never stopped wondering, since that day:_ _  
_ _Where have you been?_ _  
_ _Where are you now?_ _  
_ _And you, the shining pinnacle of my regrets, did you lose or did you find?_ _  
_ _I don't know._ _  
_ _And I will never know._ _  
_ _It hurts to even remember your name, my love._ _  
_ _And I don't have the answer._ _  
_ _But this is how I like to imagine it, the answer._ _  
_ _In the end, my love, we have no choice._ _  
_ _We have to find._

* * *

Brienne dropped the paper, swiping at the tears in her eyes.

“Oh Jaime,” she sighed, feelings of nostalgia bubbled in her. Now that so much time had passed, it no longer hurt to think of him. And her mind could only think of him now. Jaime with his part-time irksome, part-time cheeky smile. And his mischievous green eyes. Or his gazelle-like gait. Or the way he smiled and she felt like it was just for her. 

It was nice to feel like that. 

It was nice to feel warm at the memory of Jaime and not angry at herself for remembering him.

She traced the text on the glossy paper of _King's Landing Chronicles._ Sansa had mailed it in from the mainland with the insistence that she read it.

When Brienne and Jaime had stopped seeing each other nearly eleven years ago she'd been heartbroken and distraught. The memories in Winterfell had quickly proven too much and she left her new home for her old one. It was a comforting choice in the end. There was something welcoming that she felt on Tarth that she had not felt before. Something that perhaps the change she sought inside of her, and had experienced on the mainland, allowed for as she sought to build a life of her own. 

Over a decade since, and she felt calm in knowing she’d met that goal. That her life in smalltown Morne was something that existed without ghosts of her dead mother and siblings and memories of a man she expected would never enter her life again. 

Unburdened, she sat comfortably at the dining table her father had carved for her and her family. The laughs from her children, young and precocious and so full of love, teased into the house through the open windows. They were accompanied by the squeaks of skin against water and thick plastic as her children went through the slip-n-slide she’d made for them, over and over again. 

Oh, how she loved Gal and Alys. 

The choice to embrace motherhood and start a family after she’d given up on ever finding love again, had been easily the most rewarding thing in her life. It was something she had wanted as much as she wanted to fall in love. Raising her two had been a balm for so many internalized wounds, and the pain that used to flare constantly became forgotten and relegated to a dusty corner of her memories. 

And yet to know that she’d still been on his mind brought a sharp relief to know that Brienne of yesteryears had not been a fool. She’d been in love and had been loved. None of that could be called a mistake. 

Learning what had been in his mind, she could say, too, that the end was not her fault. Here was physical evidence to put her fears at bay and tell herself “Look, you are whole! It was him who was broken!”

But it sounded rather cracked and jaded and Brienne wasn’t feeling cracked and jaded herself. She had loved him and he had loved her. 

Not all who loved were allowed to be together. It was the theme of her own parents’ tragically short love story and she would be remiss to think it could never apply to her. As sad as likening her story to her mother and father's was, she could also find the evidence she needed to point out to herself that what had existed in those brief months _was_ a love story. 

It had to have been. Because once he’d left, Brienne had never wanted to love another man again. The ending might have been harsh, but the rest of it was a fairytale. No one could ever know her, ever understand her, as well as he had. She had been prepared to never be loved in life and now that she had experienced a love to end all loves, she didn’t ever want to fill in the gap with a poor replacement. 

She no longer felt like she needed to.

Brienne shook her head and stood up from the table, brushing her fingers gently over Jaime’s words one more time. 

“Love bugs!” she called out, making her way down the back porch, pulling off her own clothes to reveal her own swimsuit underneath, “Wanna learn a trick you didn’t know Mommy could do?”

She jogged slowly past them in the direction of the nearby cove.

“Yeah!” they screamed joyfully. 

They took off as fast as their much smaller legs could take them and crashed into her sides, each grasping for one of her hands. Alys was quick to intertwine her long, nimble fingers with her mother’s left, while Gal was clumsily forceful as he wrapped both his hands around her right in an airtight clasp. 

Leading the children on, Brienne brought them to a short cliff overlooking the cove and kneeled before them, “Now we’re only ever going to do this with Mommy’s permission and an adult with you okay?”

The two of them nodded vigorously, enthusiastic at the prospect of whatever she was going to show them.

“Alright,” Brienne grinned, standing up and letting go of their hands. “Watch me and do what I do.”

Putting a good distance between her and the cliff's edge, Brienne squatted down into a runners position and quickly pressed off against the earth with a mighty push, speeding towards the edge. On reaching it, she pushed off with all her might and yelled into the air with a freeness she rarely allowed herself.

“Goldenhand!” she screamed, like a knight invoking the legends beside her into battle. 

She’d forgotten what it was like to freefall in exposed air, exhilarating and a little bit terrifying all at once. But the air was warm and her hair experienced its own descent as gravity pulled her down and she couldn't help the want to yell again. So she did.

The ocean welcomed her lovingly when she breached the surface and for a moment, Brienne thought of Jaime, taking her just outside of Casterly Rock, encouraging her to take the leap.

Above the children cheered when she surfaced, then swam backwards to put space between her and the bottom of the cliff. 

“Your turn!” she yelled, cupping her hands to her face. 

Gal and Alys looked at each other. They grinned and moved away from view. 

With them out of sight, Brienne briefly allowed her eyes to close, lapsing into that memory of Jaime, sunkissed and smirking as he pulled her after him into the water. His bright, light laugh as she screamed bloody murder and he yelled out “Goldenhand!” like it was the normal battle cry for this sort of event. 

“Goldenhand!” the children screamed out in delight and she opened her eyes to watch Gal and Alys catch air. Of course, without her there, they’d decided to jump in holding tightly to each other’s hands. 

Brienne couldn’t stop the love that overwhelmed her heart.

Their identical faces were lit with joy. Their golden hair fluttered in the Tarth wind. 

When they surfaced, they paddled over to her, trying to talk over the other in their battle to hold all her attention. Their emerald green eyes glittered with impish glee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brienne’s twins are close, but not incest close.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> -Vira xx


	5. Modern AU: Si Tú La Quieres

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After learning his secrets, Brienne kicks her husband Jaime out of the house and flees to Tarth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was surprised by the volume of positive feedback I received for the last drabble, thank you all so much for the kudos and kind comments. 
> 
> (This update is a repost/import from a separately posted work for organizational purposes. A few edits have been made.)

The movies always made running look easy.

Reality was not so smooth. 

It took Brienne several hours after kicking Jaime out of the house to set things straight. There was calling into work: citing a family emergency so she could take several days and unused vacation time to think over things. There was booking airline tickets for her and baby Arthur to Tarth. There was pasting on a fake smile to assure the twins, Jo and Gal, that they were going to have _such a fantastic time_ sleeping over with at the Starks for the weekend. There was the desire to give in to her emotions when Sansa’s face turned stoney as Brienne revealed what she had discovered, compounded by an equally opposing force that wanted to protect Jaime from Sansa’s ire. 

There was the humiliation she felt when her father opened his front door to her. The shame she couldn't ignore when he took one look at her, at the baby on her hip and the weary lines and dried tear tracks across her face and pronounced, 

“So you’re leaving him, huh?”

Said with such aplomb that Brienne almost turned and ran.

Instead, she brushed past him to grab the keys to the small seaside cottage her mother had left her far out in the less populated parts of Tarth, waving awkwardly to his long-term partner Lenore as she walked past. She politely declined her offers for dinner, eager to be alone without her father’s knowing looks and his unneccesary comments about the financial cost of divorce.

Her phone blew up with texts from Jaime. She changed it to silent, but the continuing vibrations made her anxious. Eventually, she turned off her phone and pitched it to the bottom of her bag. When she’d turned it on in the morning, she couldn’t scroll far enough to find where his texts and voicemails had originally started. Day by day he filled her phone with calls and texts and emails until yesterday, he stopped. 

There’d been no word from him since.

She was due back in King’s Landing, there was only so long the twins would be convinced Mommy had allowed them an extended playdate with their Stark "cousins." She couldn’t have Margaery cover her classes forever. She had students who would want to discuss the mid-term post-spring break and graduate students who she’d need to sit down with for advising. 

But she didn’t want to go back. 

The first few days back on Tarth had been a new and taxing emotional journey. The first and second day she raged and raged and raged in her mind. The third day she found herself in a whirlpool of capitulating emotions. One moment she loathed him. The next she loved him. Then she would hate him. Then she would grow angry with herself for needing him. Every emotion came in equal measure and she wondered if this is what the love he felt for Cersei had been like. 

_He called me his other half,_ the specter of Cersei whispered. Her words felt like the burn of acid on flesh and the pervasion of poison in the body. _From the moment we were born we were destined to be together._ Cersei’s words were dirty and wrong, but they also held some truths.

Valiantly she tried to bat the words away, but they crept and crept and crept. And Brienne felt herself getting pulled further down during those nightmarish forty-eight hours.

On the fourth day, Brienne woke exhausted. The simultaneous experience of emotions wore her down so completely she felt numb. Peace came afterwards, slowly crawling back and Brienne felt herself begin to come to terms with all the things she had not known before. And all the things she did.

She knew, had always known, she wasn’t made for a tumultuous love. 

After growing up with her father on Tarth, she’d learned to make sure her actions were thought out and words were considered before spoken. Problems were solved methodically, giving logic just as much credence as emotions. She was never made to be a part of a fire and brimstone sort of love. 

Love was different here on Tarth. 

Or Tarth reminded her of what love was meant to be.

And after thinking about all that Cersei had said, she rejected her intuited definition at least. 

Love was healthy like the soil of the island. Rich in nutrients that allowed the flora to grow to luxurious proportions and the fauna to flourish and roam the island. It was the calm of the glittering Tarth sea below the bluff she sat on with a sleeping Arthur. It was the gentle playfulness of the island breeze. It was the steadfastness of the five hundred year old oak that shaded her and her youngest son from the day’s bright sun. It weathered storms that sometimes broke up the landscape and came out more beautiful for it. It was— 

“Brienne.”

She’d been so lost in her thoughts, she’d failed to notice her husband’s approaching footsteps until he stood nearly before her. He seated himself besides her 

“Hello, Jaime,” she greeted. “I’m surprised you found the place.”

She’d never taken Jaime to her mother’s seaside cottage. She rarely came herself, and the last time she’d visited was a week back when she and Jaime were still new to dating. It was far out of the way and it had never made sense to bring Jaime when she rarely came herself. Instead she left it as a source of income, renting it out to tourists, and leaving the maintenance to Goodwin and his family.

Jaime grimaced. “I am too, to be honest. I was pretty sure I’d gone on a goose chase.”

“I’m sure my father would have told you if I wasn’t here.”

“I was afraid he’d punch me, before I could get a single word out. Figured I was better off trying to make it on what you have told me about your mom’s place”

Brienne shrugged, “He’s certain I’m leaving you so you may have sympathy from him yet.”

Jaime straightened at the mention of the marriage possibly ending. His hands tightened into fists in his lap, the sun glinting off the gold of his wedding band. 

Brienne shifted their sleeping soon into a more comfortable position in her arms. “Well here I am.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

Jaime didn’t speak immediately and she found herself unwilling to look away while he looked at her, searching her for an answer to a question she wished she knew. It had been so long since she’d been able to understand his mind. 

“Do you want to draw the papers or should I?” he asked, choosing then to look away from her.

Brienne felt the anger she thought spent lash back.

“Is that it? Are you really going to let everything between us go?”

Jaime looked pained. “I’ve caused you so much hurt, it wouldn’t be fair to fight you after all I’ve done.”

“And would you still cause me pain?” she pushed. 

Jaime backed away briefly at her vehemence, “ _Of course not_ ,” he gritted out, “I never intended to hurt you and I never would want to.”

“So why are you acting like a coward?” she pushed. “Your skeletons come out and instead of trying to right things you push me away and-”

“I’m not pushing you away, I’m releasing you!”

“What’s the difference?” she asked. “It’s not as if you asked my opinion, instead, you’ve decided what I wanted and now you’re going to see it through and just bring yourself back down because of your cowardice.”

“It’s not cowardly to allow you your freedom,” Jaime argued. 

“ _My_ _freedom_?” she nearly screeched, ignorant to the way both their voices were rising. “When have I ever told you that our marriage was a prison?” 

Jaime stuttered.

Brienne exhaled. “Own up to your mistakes, Jaime,” she begged. Helplessness didn't sit well with her but she felt it all the same. “You’re a better man than the one I used to know but you can be a better one still.”

Jaime peered at her in surprise. “Why are you being kind to me? Shouldn’t you be angry?”

“Oh, I’m furious,” she said, “but I’m so tired of it now.”

“Are you saying you’ll take me back?” Jaime asked, hopeful.

Brienne pursed her lips. “Not exactly,” she said, “I’m saying you have a chance to make this right, but this was just the tipping point, Jaime. We haven’t been acting like a couple in ages.”

He sighed falling back against the ground. He ran a hand over his face. “I know I’m sorry. I know we’ve been distant. I don’t know how to fix it. With Cersei, we always just...fucked? Ignored it?”

“Jaime,” she broke in, “that won’t fix our problems.”

“I already knew,” he muttered, “I don’t know how to be what you need.”

Brienne gripped the loose ends of the blanket swaddling Arthur tight in her hands. Jaime seemed so confident all the time. She’d forgotten he didn’t always know the answers. 

“You could come home more often,” she offered. “I know you work to prove something to your father, Jaime but the only man you need to satisfy is yourself. The children miss you. And I know we’ve talked about it before but if we want us to work, we’re going to have to go to marriage counseling, I think there might be a lot we need to tell each other, a lot we don’t know how to say, but it’s not saying those things that’s caused us to hurt each before Cersei chose to show up.”

Jaime nodded. “You’re right, I just, urgh,” he rolled his palms against his eyes. “I thought putting Cersei and Tywin out of my life was enough.”

“We still have time to fix this,” Brienne reminded him, “and to share all the secrets we never told each other. We’re not so far gone.”

“I hope not,” Jaime said. “I love you. Just because I’ve been a shit husband, I'm still very much in love with you. I still want you.”

Brienne felt a tear leak from her eye. “I didn’t know. I didn’t think you wanted me. I thought you looked at me and saw a lump. Even more unsexy then when you first met me. I’m not even fit anymore.”

“What?!” Jaime’s head came up startled and he sat back up. 

“Do you know how sexy you are?” he asked, waving his hands at her body. “Brienne’s, your boobs, do you know how good it makes me feel to know that they’ve swelled because _I_ got you to carry not one, but three of my children? Your hips, gods. And I swear your clit got even more sensitive during Arthur.”

“Jaime!” she interjected face going red. 

He grinned, before his face fell back into a frown. “I’m sorry I made you feel unwanted. I’ve never stopped wanting you.”

She scrunched her face, trying to stop an onslaught of tears from coming out and nearly jumped when she felt one of Jaime’s hands come over hers. “When can I do right now, Brienne, to show you I want to fix this? I’ll do therapy, I’ll stop doing extra office hours and managing university events. But I know there’s more. I just don’t know what that is and I need you to tell me. I’m not smart enough to figure it out.”

“Talk to me.” she said. “We vowed for better or worse and you need to tell me about the worse of you. The things that you think will make me not love you. Like the fact that you were sleeping with your sister until your twenties. That your nephews and niece are also your children. Tell me all the things your father ever did or said to you. Tyrion. Everything that happened within the walls of Casterly Rock and outside of it. Tell me everything that you were too ashamed to tell me before, because I need to understand you if this is going to work.”

“And will you talk to me?” Jaime questioned. “I know you were bullied. I know there was a bet about your virginity, but you’ve never talked about it, and sometimes I used to feel like I was walking on a landmine with you when it came to intimacy. I don’t know every bad thing your nanny told you, but I think if I knew I might better understand what you need from me.”

“I will,” she agreed. And she started telling him about Roelle and the things she’d make her tell herself in the front of the mirror. Jaime, feeling eased in, started with Tywin’s abuse, and they kept talking, and talking, and filling in the pieces that had made them at times a puzzle to each other. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Si Tu La Quieres = If You Love Her
> 
> Title is from the David Bisbal song of the same name.
> 
> I previously posted this as a one shot on 13/5/2020, but considering I have two one-shots I would like to post before the end of the year (assuming I can get over my social anxiety and figure out how to ask someone for help beta-ing and figure out how people do that lol) that are already over 11K , I'd like to import this into my drabble collection.
> 
> To TeamGwenee, fallpoutboy, and DayneIN who previously commented on the original post, thank you for your feedback. :)
> 
> As always, positive feedback, constructive criticism, and questions are always appreciated. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. 
> 
> -Vira xx


	6. High School AU. Surprise, it's New Year's.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaery always prided herself on being a good friend. Brienne would beg to differ.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The result of me somehow watching a good chunk of Girl Meets World on Youtube a year ago even though I'm pretty sure I'm not the target audience. 
> 
> I'm team Riley x Farkle, Maya x Josh, and Lucas x a personality for those who know the show lol. I honestly have no explanation. Someone may potentially hate me for these ships and I apologize XD
> 
> This is set in high school. Everyone (except for Arya) is an upperclassman.

“5.”

“4.”

“3.”

“2.”

“1!”

“Happy-”

“ ** _Brienne’s not over Jaime._** ”

Margaery’s voice cut so loud over everyone that their collective voices faltered. Sansa froze. Jon looked gobsmacked. Arya’s face had turned tense.

Brienne stumbled back from Hyle who’s face had been hovering near hers. 

Margaery looked grim.

Above them fireworks began to erupt in the night sky raining colors of festive gold and red on them. Everyone who had horns in hand held them awkwardly, eyes glancing between Margaery, Brienne, Hyle, Jaime and Cersei.

To the side, Sam and Gilly’s lit sparklers died out feebly in their hands.

“I told you, Bri,” Margaery accused, the sequins of her dress glittering red like her impassioned irritation with Brienne, “You needed to tell him or I would.”

“Margaery…” she whispered, blood rushing from her face. 

Cersei was quick to interrupt. 

“Jamie, let’s leave. I don’t want to be here and we might as well put the cow out of her misery,” she sneered, looking at Brienne down her nose and pulling her step brother in the direction of the door. 

He didn’t move and the pair of them stayed rooted to their spot.. 

“Brienne,” Jaime asked softly. “Is that true?”

“I-” she stuttered out and shut her mouth. Hyle and Cersei were looking at her angrily, daring her to say _anything_. “I should go,” she decided. “Hyle, I don’t need a ride home.” Jaime looked like he wanted to argue that with her but she hurried past him. “Happy new year's, everyone,” she muttered and threw open the door to the stairwell.

“Brienne, wait!” she heard Jaime shout as she dashed down the stairs.

“Just leave the beast, Jaime,” she heard Cersei’s voice echo down the stairwell, “can’t you see she wants to be alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted 22/6/2020.
> 
> Ngl. this is not my finest hour at writing, but I needed to destress for a sec. 
> 
> Currently, this is me avoiding the thirty-two hours left I need to complete to renew my medic cert in eight days (even though i had eighteen months over which I could have spread the whole thing), editing my three canon compliant, reddit challange, and Christmas longshots, and starting to write my fic exchange gift (which I'm absolutely stuck on). 
> 
> -Vira T.T
> 
> (PS- I did start my renewal hours. I'm just mad at myself for being quite an idiot lol. Kids don't do what I do.)


	7. Arthuriana AU: Into the Mists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the shadow of Harrenhal, she runs along the shoreline of Gods Eye Lake, calling for the Old Gods, looking for the Isle of Faces. She has to save her husband. But there is no island as far as she can see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This felt very different from what I usually write. You will immediately notice by the point of view. I've been reading In the Mists of Avalon by Marion "she-who-does-not-deserved-to-be-named-because-she-was-a-child-abuser-and-enabler-but-she's-dead-so-I-can-be-relieved-she-won't-ever-profit-from-the-book-again" Bradley and this wrote itself easily and now I have a two part, In the Mists of Avalon/Avalon High(by Meg Cabot who isn't a creep)/slight Merlin fusion. 
> 
> This story is very much Braime but that becomes more prominent in part 2. Part one has mentions of another Jaime pairing that is politically aligned and not rooted from romantic love. 
> 
> Note: Mentions of Jonsa for plot purposes.

The day The High King returned to Harrenhal to seek The Isle of Faces, where The Old Gods were once said to have roamed, the sky poured the heaviest it ever had in all man’s known memory. 

Queen Sansa had come with him. Had brought him really. And now she stood in the shadow of the long abandoned castle. How mad must she look running up and down the shoreline of Gods Eye lake? Calling for Gods with no names? As a girl, she was raised in the faith of the Seven by her mother. Then, early on she had renounced the faith of her father. But her Seven had brought about the destruction of the kingdom. By invoking them, declaring them the the true Gods of her lands, Westeros had lost the protections of The Old Gods and evil had been quick to step in and poison their realm. Today, she stood before them, at the old religion’s holiest place, begging their forgiveness so she could save her husband’s life.

 _“Help me!_ ” she screamed out into the misty void, “ _You_ , you who sent your wizards and witches and prophets and said my husband would bring a Golden Age upon us save him! Help our people!” She had not changed clothes since she’d fled from the castle, immediately after the battle. It showed. Her gown, roughspun of wool and left without any decadent coloring to better hide amongst the servants, was ripped at the arms when she’d been briefly caught by soldiers in that false King Joffrey’s armies. The hemline of her dress ran red with blood that it had brushed upon in the floors of the castle as she had run to evade capture. “Please,” she yelled, hoping someone would hear her prayer from the heavens. “The High King is dying, save him, please! Save him!”

A ways away, where she had left them deposited in a copse of pines, the head of the King’s Round Table, Lord Commander Jon Snow kneeled deep into the mud and cradled his liege, holding his head carefully in his lap. The man who had raised him from his bastard status, had been his mentor and closest friend, lay so near death. Jon Snow could do nothing. 

“Your majesty, we’re here, just as you asked. We made it to Harrenhal.” When he received no response he cursed out. “ _Godsdamn_ you, we’re here, your majesty. Wake up. _Wake up._ ” 

The king didn’t wake. His eyes did not open. His mouth did not twitch. From afar, Jon could still hear Sansa screaming to the Gods of the Old Faith. Perhaps it had been useless to go to them. Perhaps like The Seven, they were also false lies to con coin from the people and control the crown. 

Or perhaps they did not answer to sinners. Jon knew he had broken the most sacred of oaths, betraying his King, the man he loved most, by lying with his Queen and laying with her in their own marriage bed. Even though he and Sansa wanted to save the best man in all of Westeros, the most honourable of them, perhaps they sentenced him to die by being the ones who interceded on his behalf before the Gods. 

At the shoreline, Sansa had run into the same conclusion as she stumbled in the mud, nearly tripping over a rock. She was losing energy and hope. Again, she looked to the lake, seeking out for the Isle her husband had told her would be there. She could not see it. She could only see the dark shape of the opposite shore’s edge through the curtain of torrential rain. He wouldn’t lie to her. Despite the little known early days when he was still a duke, she had never known him to be anything but honourable. She had told him so on occasion when he had done an act so kind even her own heart had leapt, but he would argue that he was one of the worst sinners in the world. It was only by the grace of meeting a savior, he claimed, that he was now trying to atone for his sins. 

A turn in the wind cause the rain to fall furiously against Sansa’s back and she fell forward. Her knees sank to the wet rocks. Head low, she reached forward, hands sinking into the freezing water, and prostrated herself before the Gods in one last supplication. If they didn’t answer now, she decided, she would take Jon and her king and they would seek a maester. She couldn’t waste what little chance her husband had. “Please,” she whispered. Her lips hovered just above the lake’s rolling water. “Please, take my life if you must, but spare him. I invoked the Seven. I brought upon our ruin. The fall of our Kingdom is not his fault.” 

“Your majesty,” came a sound from all around her, “the Gods need not your blood. This is a path the King was fated to take.”

Sansa looked up and jumped back in surprise, scrambling in the rocks and tearing the soft skin of her palms as she backed further away into sharp-rocked soil. 

“Who are you?” she asked, frightened. Was it really her husband’s deliverer? Or her executioner in disguise? 

The woman who stood before her was everything beyond what Sansa had ever imagined from her Gods. She was beyond beauty and ugliness and existed to some realm of her own standard that Sansa found herself unable to comprehend. She glowed without bringing light. She was warrior and woman and Sansa had never met her likeness in all her years as a Lady and then as a Queen. 

The woman smiled gently, “They call me many names, but now I am simply a guardian of The Isle.”

“My lady,” she stuttered and fell into a low bow so that her forehead nearly met the muddy floor. 

Gentle hands fell to her arms, leading her to rise. “Come to your feet, Sister.”

Sansa did. She looked up and was struck again by this woman.The figure who came from the mists could only be described as otherworldly. Sansa, a mere mortal, had never seen such a likeness. Her body swathed in drapes of white, her hair the lightness of the old Targaryen High Kings and their children, and her eyes a blue more intense than the richest hued sapphires. 

This was the Lady her husband had always seemed to seek when he looked past Sansa. This was the Lady whose memory he could never erase. Whose love he had always missed. Whose name had been the final word to leave his lips. 

Tears well in her eyes. “You should kill me,” she murmured, “everything your king hoped to achieve, I’ve ruined. How can you not want me dead?”

“You could not change what the Gods had predetermined.”

“It was not the gods that chose to betray my husband, nor was it the Gods who made the decision to allow a man who was not him into my bed. I failed him for not being able to love him. I failed our country by not providing an heir. I failed everyone by bringing about the worship of the Seven. He’s dead by my faithlessness and disloyalty to all he stood for.”

The being above her hummed. “Are you Cersei? Did you bewitch your brother? Bear his child without his knowledge? Raise your child to overthrow his own father?”

Sansa shook her head.

“Those who try to fight against fate, often find themselves in worse troubles. Your husband understood the risks when he accepted the choice of the dukes. He faulted you not. I know him. He never would.”

Sansa shook her head. “You don’t know that, milady. He was so good, so kind to me, and yet, when he left, I strayed. I loved another man far more strongly than I ever did him.”

The woman made a sound of understanding, “But he was not the man you truly chose,” she said, conciliatory. “You, a mere child then, took up the duty to bridge your kingdom when your brother failed to uphold his obligations to the people. You married a man you did not know. For all you could have known, he might have hurt you, but you took the risk to save your kingdom and create peace. Love finds us in the least expected places milady, but to hope for the highest love in marriage is a rarity. He would have understood.”

“You...you,” Sansa stuttered, “you know him. I know you do. How can you be so kind?” She burst into tears, “I wronged you as well.”

“Shhh…” the lady murmured, laying hands upon her to calm her. “Now where is he?”

Hiccuping, Sansa grasped the woman’s hand and pulled her along, taking her to the pines that decorated the furthest edge of the lake, far from the reach of that dreadful castle. Under the boughs, Jon, who’s eyes she could still barely meet, held his king tightly in his lap. The blood from his open wounds continued to mix with the rainwater. 

Jon looked up to see the mysterious woman beside Sansa. His eyes widened in surprise. “He will not last long.” 

Her husband had somehow worsened more than Sansa thought possible. When Sansa left them beneath the trees, she’d believed him the nearest to death a man could go. Yet, surrounded by reddened mud and scarlet puddles, he appeared ghastly white. Bruises under his eyes had darkened to shades of violet. His joints and points looked more prominent under his tunic and breeches. His skin almost seemed to recede in on itself and he looked smaller, less magnificent than Sansa had ever known him to be.

The Lady gasped, “Jaime,” she breathed, expelling all breath within her. “Jaime!” She wretched her hand from Sansa suddenly, running through the tall, wild grasses that separted them from the men. All her pretence of otherworldly regality dropped at the sight of The High King. She fell to her knees beside him.

Jaime, who had not woken since giving his plea that Jon and Sansa deliver him to Harrenhal, shifted and groaned. “Brienne,” he tried, though the sounds of his voice were garbled by hoarseness. “You are here.”

The woman, Brienne, who Sansa was beginning to think was more than just a guard for a mystical island, reached out her hand. She allowed her fingers to fall gently over Jaime’s. The same fingers that were clenched around his sword, Oathkeeper. No matter how much Sansa and Jon had begged him to release it, to provide his body ease during their rush to Harenhall, he refused to let it go. Brienne used hers to emulate his own, grasping his hands in the same firm way he still held on to that wretched sword. No one had known when The High King had run into that sword. As a duke, he was not known to wield it. As a man, he would let no one handle it but himself. It had not been there, and then one day it simply was. Sansa, the few times she had asked him, had been brushed off. But beneath the branches of water laden pine needles, he allowed this woman’s fingers to glide across his own, filling the cracks between his fingers that left the grip exposed.

“Yes.” Brienne smiled. It was a familiar smile filled with warmth and history and shattered experiences. In that moment, Sansa felt herself a voyeur. “I’ve come to take you home.”

“Home,” Jaime echoed, “I would so like to go home. My mother loved being there. I did too. In the short time I was allowed.”

“Then I will take you,” she assured. 

“May I stay?”

“You never have to leave again. I shall never force you to.”

Jaime looked to her, “I’ve dreamt of you for so long, my Lady of the Lake.”

“And I of you.” Speaking softly to Jon, she leaned further down into the dirt and slid her arms beneath The King. Carefully, she pushed her feet against the earth, straightening up with him cradled in her arms. 

“He will be coming with me, Queen Sansa,” Brienne informed her and Sansa nodded. 

“Can you save him?” she asked.

“He shall know rest,” Brienne answered, instead. Her skin glimmered even as the hazy mist turned steadily into an encroaching darkness. The unseen sun was slipping beneath the horizon.

Sansa came up to Jaime, her husband and king. Sorrow filled her heart. That they had never been able to love each other as lovers aught. That they had only been able to, at best, be friends and companions who knew their duty. 

“Jaime,” she whispered, “This is all my fault.”

Jamie opened his eyes to look at Sansa fondly, if a bit wearied by their final adventure. “How could you ever love me when I never allowed you my heart in the first place?”

She returned his look with an equally affectionate expression, relieved. How freeing it was that for once they could acknowledge their inability to love each other in the way they should. 

“Sansa,” he continued, voice still raspy, “you are my heir. My hand, Tyrion, and all the dukes have sworn that should I perish, you will succeed me. Joffrey is no longer here to taint the country with his malice. Please. I know you can bear the burden.”

Again, Sansa thought she might cry. Years ago, when she’d barely flowered, she had trembled under the weight of pledging herself in marriage to the older duke from House Lannister. But Robb had been a fool and Sansa had seen no choice but to clean up the mess he made. They’d needed to seek an alliance with the Lannister duke before all hell broke loose. In her marriage to Jaime, she’d struggled to affirm her own weight in court, to gain respect of the Southron Lords who did not know a woman’s worth. As a woman, she began to believe herself a failure after over a decade had passed and she continued to bear her husband no sons or daughters. She, who had struggled with the weight of her womanhood, blinked at this unexpected gift. Sansa had already resigned herself for a trip to the silent sisters after this was over.

“Of course,” she whispered. “I will not let your memory be in vain. No one will ever forget your name.”

Jaime smiled and looked at Jon who had always stood steadfastly by his side. “Jon, you have been my brother in all but name. Please. Keep Sansa safe. Protect the kingdom.”

The Lord Commander bit his lip. “Of course, your majesty. I will never again lead it astray. Westeros will have my life.”

Jaime looked at each of them. His eyes were gentle. “Westeros will never ask you to conflict your head and heart again. Please you two, you have been my world in the mortal life. For all that has happened, for all the love you have shown me, _live_. We’ve lost too much.”

The pair made their promises, murmuring soothing words until they were interrupted by Brienne. 

“His hour draws near,” she announced, nodding her head to the lake “It is time for us to depart.” At her words, a path seemed to clear for them in the mist and rain. And at the end of it, there was an island in the middle of the lake that had not been there before. 

Try as she might, Sansa could not see it clearly. There seemed to be a veil over it, as if it was not meant for her eyes. 

Sansa and Jon followed the Lady Brienne in a slow procession. Jaime had fallen back into his near death state but color seemed to have returned to his cheeks as he lay in the Lady’s arms. When they reached the shore’s edge, she turned to them.

“The Old Gods will return when the Golden Age of Westeros comes again, but it will not be in any of our lifetimes,” she pronounced. “But when that day comes, we will all meet again.” 

As Jaime left them, in the cradle of his Lady’s arms, the mist seemed to close in around them until they were no more. For a long while, Sansa kept watching, hoping to catch one more glimpse. Instead, the rain faltered and the skies opened. And when the lands had cleared, the Lake was shimmering, unmarred in the sunset light. 

There was no island to be seen.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a very different step for me and I have been hesitant to post it, but the follow up I think ties in well and justifies this tragic first part. I appreciate writing conflicts/angst, but I'm also an optimist outside of my personal cynicism. I'm not the biggest fan of tragedies because we deal with enough as is. (Also, to be be honest, in my head canon for this story, no one ends up happy in part 1, Jon and Sansa can never leave the guilt of what they did behind and are never lovers again. And Jaime Brienne are too little too late. Part 1 is a lot of sadness.) If you are willing, I would really appreciate the feedback. Thank you. :) 
> 
> -Vira xx


	8. Modern AU: Things That Go Bump in the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To the nights we won't remember, and the people we can't forget. aka Brienne and Jaime drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've spent this week giving my 110% to being an active auntie to my baby nieces while they're in town and gotta admit, I'm so wiped. At least I'll come out of this week swole with all the muscle I'm building. XD. So while editing my current drabbles goes on hold (because my brain is dead from exhaustion), enjoy this fairly complete scene that I wrote a few years ago for a story I never finished. I will come back to clean up any incorrect grammer that escaped my notice later. 
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> -Vira xx

For a brief moment he thinks that the lights in the kitchen make her eyes look a deeper, richer shade of blue. Then, she’s grabbing two fistfuls of his sweater and jerking him towards her. When her mouth reaches up to cover his, his mind shuts down. Suddenly, he’s no longer thinking about anything beyond the simple fact that Brienne is kissing him. 

Kissing him so fiercely that his legs might give out from under him. 

Shit.

_Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit._

Her mouth is warm, soft, and slick. She is hypnotic, enrapturing him as if she wrote the bestselling book on Driving Jaime Lannister Crazy 101. His pulse is jumping—a beat so hyperactive that— **_Focus!_ **

He mentally berates himself, trying to ignore the blood roaring through his veins, fueled by an unchecked amount of alcohol and months of ( _Gods, who’s he trying to convince? It’s been years)_ longing that he’s always been too chicken to act on. He slowly brings his hands up, with the intention of easing her off him, but the only result is his right hand burying itself in her hair.

“Fuck, what am I doing?” she groans. It has the effect of being a bucket of ice water on his emotions.

What is she doing?

Brienne is much more than his friend and housemate. She knows all about his past and is part of his present.

She is one of his _best_ friends. 

She’s the woman he loves. 

But if anything is a red light, it’s the fact that she’s in a serious relationship with another guy. She isn’t supposed to be here, kissing the life out of him in their apartment kitchen after a supposedly relaxing evening of mixed shots and trying to outdo each other with lip-syncing to their picks of ‘worst’ songs.

No matter how much Margaery gets a kick out of quoting Hollywood movies and paraphrasing _My Best Friend’s Wedding_ whenever Brienne has her over, he’s not a dick and he’s not going to ruin what he has with Brienne by—

She presses herself closer to him.

All right.

So maybe talking mid-lip lock is not the best time to argue his point but - _hey_! - he’s trying.

Seriously.

With his hand still buried in her short locks, he pulls back, trying to meet her eyes with his own. Brienne’s eyes are bursting bright and he’s a hundred percent sure she’ll regret this in the morning, even if he won’t.

“I don’t know, Brienne, what _are_ you doing?”

“Shut up, Lannister.” Her throaty whisper drives him nearer to the edge. She kisses him again, coming closer and moving him until his backside hits the edge of the counter. 

He swallows. “Do you want some tea, Brienne? Aunt Genna just sent me a sample of some teas to give to you.”

She tugs at his bottom lip. “I really hate you sometimes.”

“What?” He’s trying to feel offended by her comment, but it’s a bit problematic when her hands Won’t. Stop. Moving.

“Walking the fuck around like you’re humanity's greatest prize with your face and voice, and being all funny and charming when -” Her voice muffles against his neck. Then he feels the soft scrape of her teeth on his skin, and he can’t keep in the deep exhale that vibrates through his chest. “I mean what the hell am I supposed to do?”

To say Jaime is out of his element is putting the situation likely. Trying to change the mood of the current circumstances, he tries to go for funny and asks, “Are you trying to tell me that you like me, Brienne?”

His attempt at levity implodes because Brienne leans into him, her breasts soft against his chest, one hand coming moving off his back to reach for the counter behind him. “I’m saying,” she slurs slightly, “that. “You and me, that’s such a bad idea when we’re best friends and Hyle and I and Hyle with his—shit—my timing sucks.”

Jaime is just beginning to realize that Brienne has considered the idea of him. She’s imagged _them_ as something more than close friends. And that little trill of excitement, to know she’s contemplated the idea of them, it’s intoxicating. Before he can say anything though, maybe tell her to leave her tool of a boyfriend, her lips a hair’s breadth away from his. “I’ve screwed things up now, I’m sorry.”

Then she’s pressing into him and kissing him once more, her mouth soft and burning, allowing him a glimpse of the desire inside of her, making his body respond instantaneously with a flash of hunger that shocks him in its intensity and want.

He melds his mouth against hers, kisses her throat, and tastes the rapidly fluttering pulse below her jaw. Her right hand slides underneath his sweater, pulling out his shirt, to scrape along the contours of his stomach, and want fills him, pushing him to go farther, to go faster, and to let her feel exactly what it is she’s doing to him. When she sighs breathily, pressing her hips against his with clear intent, his mouth blindly seeks hers, quickly finding it like a magnet does it’s polar opposite, pushing her against the cabinets to revel in the feel that is all her. He kisses her until they’re both panting and clutching at each other.

Crash!

It’s the sudden clatter of pans hitting the ground after being knocked off the counter that brings him back to reality. 

And right on time. 

Quickly, the energy that’s been charging up in her dissipates and she sags against him.

“Alright, Brienne,” Jaime tells her as he wraps an around the back of her waist to keep her from stumbling. “Time for bed.” Her head falls against his chest. What the hell is going on? he wonders. She’s always been a pro at drinking him under the table. This early defeat to alcohol is really unlike her. “We’ve both got classes tomorrow, remember?” his voice shakes a little as he tries to come down from the lust-filled high. “You’ve got student presentations tomorrow.”

She mutters something that sounds like a curse on her students, and he tells himself to leave it. His heart is still hammering against his chest, his breath is still short. Despite all the times he’s imagined kissing Brienne, his mind never quite managed to get even close to the glory of the reality. Feeling as if he’s just run up and down the stairs to his building a hundred times, he places his phone back down on the granite counter, then makes the decision not to bother forcing his housemate to brush her teeth or wash up. It’s probably smartest right now to get a few closed doors between them before he does something incredibly foolish. Like bare his heart or propose eloping or anything else equally dumb

After a few minutes of struggling to get her into a mobile position (aka picking her up), he gets her into her bedroom, thanking whatever god is out there that they are both dressed for everything that a night of shots and bad music at home entails. The bike shorts and tank top she’s wearing resemble pajamas enough, so he pulls back the covers of her bed, flicks off the lamp on her nightstand, and moves to the door. Even something as simple as looking at her, right now, makes him feel like a voyeur in his own home. “’Night, Brienne. Sleep well.”

He’s already closing the door when she speaks, and as soon as she does, he’s not even giving a thought to the fact he just rushed back to her side without any hesitation. “Mmmm—Jaime?”

“Yeah?”

She whispers, voice small and rough, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, lingering for a moment before deciding a kiss on her forehead is out of place now. “We’ll talk in the morning. I’ll make sure to make you something strong for that headache you’ll have.”

She doesn’t answer, seemingly gone again, and he tells himself that that is good.

He heads to the bathroom, thoughts wandering all over the place as he cleans his teeth, rubbing his face with cold water to snap himself out of whatever it is that he’s in now. He momentarily considers going out for a quick run, but it’s January, and he’s not really down for anyone getting reasonable proof he’s a dude by moving up and down the streets with a tent in his pants. 

_Huh,_ he thinks later, when he’s settled down in bed and stares forlornly out the window. Jaime’s always been totally, absolutely sure that he could handle being around her. After all, everyone _heard_ the things Brienne and Hyle got up to in her room (as unfulfilling as it sounded). They’d been together nearly a year and Jaime was beginning to resign himself to the fact that even though he thought Brienne deserved much more, she wasn’t going to let Hyle go so he’d made do with a forever role as her friend. And if he did anything to slip up, a hand lingering too long, a wistful kiss to the forehead, he could always blame it on the intimacy of their friendship, of two people who simply knew each other long enough to be able to easily grace their way into the others personal space. 

The fact he’d deluded himself so much though, does not fail to amaze it, because as he’s slowly finding out, he’s in very real danger of waking up one morning and confessing his feelings for her over something as mundane as coffee.

Now he lies in his bed, Brienne only one door down the hall, and he can still taste her kiss despite putting extra effort into brushing his teeth tonight. What in the world was she thinking? It’s not the first time they’ve gotten drunk as hell together, but never did they end their nights making out against the counter in the kitchen. Turning over, he presses his face into the pillow, trying to block out his thoughts and go to sleep. The faster he falls asleep, the quicker morning will come and the quicker he can try to figure this out.

Despite his strong intentions to put his night away, and the ample amount of imported alcohol he downed with Brienne, he still can’t fall asleep. Then again, the whole process of entering deep slumber would likely go more smoothly if he could just stop replaying every touch between him and Brienne tonight. But if tonight is will be nothing more than a one-time thing (which knowing Brienne, it probably all was just a drunken mistake), then isn’t it okay for him to torture himself just a little while longer?

“Argh!!!” Jaime rolls over and buries his face into his pillow.

* * *

The next morning, Brienne doesn't remember a single thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted 30/6/2020.


	9. Sugar Daddy AU: Seeking Arrangements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sugar Daddy AU. Brienne knows she needs to end things. This isn't working out anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please enjoy!
> 
> -Vira xx

“Baby girl,” Jaime murmured into her ear, his voice intoxicating. “Bravos wasn’t the same without you. I do wish you’d let me bring you along.” He pushed her up against the door to his room, strong hands guiding her legs to wrap around his hips. Brienne felt him hard against her and keened in response. Hearing him say those words, call her that name, made something break inside of her. She wanted to tell him that she missed him too. That she went to his penthouse while he was gone and brought herself to completion on his bed. But if she opened her mouth to speak, she'd reveal more than she intended. 

Brienne was a fool. That much was certain. She was in way over her head. When she’d first started this arrangement with Jaime Lannister, COO for Lannister-Croft, there had been a completely different dynamic. It had been one based off of mutual dislike, mutual interest in the other, and mutual off-the-charts lust. She had naively gone into this thinking their status quo would stay the same. But it hasn’t. Jaime has revealed himself to her. Has coaxed her into revealing her own self to him. And now she found herself at the precipice of wanting something different. Perhaps it was the all the work trips he had needed to take lately. Because Brienne thought more of him now when he texted her throughout the day and called her in the night. Brienne was skittish with phone sex so Jaime employed it rarely while he was gone, using their evening calls to instead ask Brienne about her day. Distance must have made her heart grow fonder because she was so, so fond of him these days. And she knew that was dangerous to all they’d agreed on. She’d been thinking it for weeks but it was clear now, she needed to break off their arrangement or she’d be hurt. But Brienne was weak. She had been weak in the presence of Renly, once upon a time. She was a thousand times worse in the presence of Jaime.

She felt so weak in his presence, overwhelmed by all the things she had not told him. She lifted her hands off his torso, winding them into his golden curls and tugged his mouth from her neck to share a frantic kiss. 

He led her into the bedroom, oblivious to her internal strife, and ate her out until she thought she would die from anticipation. No matter how she begged. No matter what she promised. He didn’t allow her to come. He only ran his lips over the parting between her thighs and used his fingers to thumb over the buds of her breasts. 

Jaime was clear from the beginning that one of his favorite things was seeing her like this. He enjoyed watching her burn with ecstasy as she got closer and closer. He reveled gleefully in her frustration when she pleaded with him for permission. Normally, she was all for it. She craved everything he did to her. But tonight, her mind refused to stay inside the confines of Jaime’s four poster bed. She wanted to stay right there in the moment with him, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t stop thinking about all the things that had passed between them. Like the way he looked at her when she picked him up in Riverlands, having driven six hours to get to him in her banged up hatchback. She couldn’t stop thinking about the texts he would send her when he went away. Not just dirty and sexy, but vulnerable and caring. He was always like that. Killing her with his casual kindness. Especially in those moments when he would murmur tender things to her.

This was becoming too much. She thought she could do it. It had been a huge relief in paying for her father’s medical care. She’d had enough to drop her job and focus on her Masters. She’d even been able to afford renovations for Evenfall. 

But this thing between her and Jaime was too much. Mentally. Emotionally. She couldn’t go on like this with him. 

“Jaime,” she breathed. It was so tempting to wait until they were done but as Jaime stroked her closer and closer to the edge her guilt ate at her and she knew she couldn’t go one. It was now or never. “Red. Red light,” she gasped out, utilizing a long unused safeword. “ _Stop._ ”

Jaime, who quickly drew back at the first mention of “red,” was looking at her anxiously. “Brienne, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” His hands ran over her like a medic assessing for injuries. How did she explain these were ones he wouldn’t see? “What do you need?”

_You._

“I-” Brienne stuttered, feeling absolutely naked in Jaime's giant bed. She clutched the sheets tighter to her chest. “I don’t think I can do this anymore,” she whispered, casting her eyes down to the mattress. 

Jaime didn’t say anything, but she immediately felt it. She felt how rapidly the temperature in the room dropped. Jaime was no longer the red hot Lion of Lannister. He was ice. He was taking himself away from her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. 

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Jaime told her, voice neutral though the words feel hollow, “I should have realized you didn’t want-”

“No!” Brienne scrambled forward in a panic. She enveloped his hands in a tight clasp. Surprised, his eyes widened and the coldness dropped from his face. “This isn’t on you, Jaime, I overstepped.” She couldn’t live with herself if she made him feel bad while ending their arrangement. She liked it. She liked this more than she wanted to admit. He wasn’t the one who got confused.

He looked to her, then back to their hands. He turned his fingers to entwine with hers. “You overstepped...” he tried out, rolling the words through his mouth. He frowned, face speculative. 

“Yes, I…” the words tripped in her mouth. “I...Wait,” she shook her head, red spreading across her face rapidly, “I can’t confess this to you without clothes on.” She untangled her hands out of his, and she started to move off his bed. 

Jaime did not let her. In a true testament to his athleticism, he swung out his arm and quickly looped it around her waist and yanked her into the surrounding warmth of his familiar body. She squirmed and tried to wriggle out of his grip but he took advantage of her unfocused movements, manipulating her body until she was lying pinned beneath him and he was breathing heavily above her. 

“So you’ve got a confession, huh.” He had a stupid smile on his face and she growled at him, trying to push at his chest. Instead of her getting the upper hand, he pressed back with a negating force and a mirthful glint in his eye. He laughed.

It wasn’t fair. Brienne was trying to share her feelings with him but he was looking at her like she’d given him the best gift ever. It stung. 

“I’m trying to be serious. This isn’t funny, Jaime,” she scowled. 

Jaime only grinned at her, keeping her in place. “It’s going to be in a sec when I tell you something.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Promise.”

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted 8/7/2020
> 
> Story notes (some sources of inspiration for this chapter):
> 
> *Also yes I took the chapter name from that sugar daddy searching app(website?)
> 
> *Obsessed with angelowl's Veronica Mars AU. JLan calling Brienne "Baby girl"...hell yes.
> 
> *Concept came to mind due to my adoration of:  
> 1) EryiScrye/SomberSecret's The Ties that Bind because um...healthy sexual "arrangements" with super hot chemistry and kinship that turns to long-lasting love(which we all know the story is heading toward :D )? Bruh, I signed up yesterday.  
> 2) some fic from another fandom (or ship in ASoIaF?) I read years ago and can't think of but had a similar idea that I kept thinking of while writing this fic. If I can think of it I will show up in this Inspo list. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> *Was also thinking of this post from Tumblr lol: https://virareve.tumblr.com/post/622694931879936000/naamahdarling-mlekonya-oblivious-i-lost-my


	10. Modern AU: Father of the Bride (Continuation of Chapter 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Didn’t you hear? Kit Tarth’s a Lannister!”
> 
> Twenty-five years after Brienne and Jaime went their separate ways, they reunite for their daughter Catelyn’s wedding.
> 
> Continuation of the Modern AU from Chapter 2

When was the last time Brienne had allowed herself to dream about love? 

When she was a girl, still blessed with naivete and optimism of the young, she dreamed of marrying her fairytale prince on the shores of Morne. She would join herself to her husband in the shadows of the castle that Ser Galladon had once resided. Her parents would stand in witness, eyes filled with tears. Alysanne and Arianne would be grown women with loves of their own by then, excited for the day they too would marry. Galladon, her beloved brother, would be the one to walk her before the septon. The sun would shine its familiar, gentle warmth, and the sea would shine its brilliant blue that her father claimed was matched by no other blue but her eyes. The wind would make her hair flutter around her like a halo, and as she promised herself to the man she would stand by forever, he’d see her at that moment, sunlit and wild. He would think her the sun and moon made flesh. 

For reasons tragic and practical, that dream would never be. The cliffs in Morne had become unstable from years of tourist use. Her mother and siblings had all died before her tenth year, and her father had passed just the last year. She had no prince. 

But The Seven had given her a different gift. Her daughter, Catelyn, Kit as she was called early on, was Brienne’s greatest accomplishment. Brienne had once wanted to be the fairytale princess, but raising one, gave a different sort of pleasure from what that fantasy prince would have.

Fortunately, Kit would never know the same heartbreak Brienne had when it came to love. Love came to Kit early on in life in the form of Sansa’s oldest boy Ned. It took over two decades for the best friends to articulate the deep-seated feelings, but they were past that now. And had reached the stage few made where fantasy turned reality. Oftentimes as she contemplated Kit and Ned over the last few years, Brienne wondered if she had ever worn the same look of love. 

“Champagne?”

Brienne startled as someone slid into the chair beside her and held out a glass of chilled bubbly.

“Jaime,” she greeted, surprised to see him. They had not spoken in two days. She glanced speculatively at the glasses in his hand, raising a brow. “A bit past the point for champagne isn’t it?” Speeches and toasts had all well been hours ago and if what she remembered about Jaime still rang true, bubbly was not his preferred choice of drink.

“Tyrion is going around trying to convince people to drink more of that godsawful Northern shit he gifted Kit and Ned,“ Kit’s father smirked. “Arm yourself before he tries to convince you to take a horn.” He passed a glass over to her. His fingers were dry and warm. 

If she were a lesser person, Brienne thought her breath might have hitched, shocked to press even the slightest skin against his. “I can’t believe he bought 800 horns of fermented goat's milk. We’ll be lucky if the Giantsbanes can finish one.” 

Jamie snorted. “He just found out I was once with someone who wasn’t Cersei. And had a kid at that. To him, it’s like Sevenmas came early.”

Brienne nodded, giving him a stiff smile and looked at the dance floor...only to end up cringing with motherly embarrassment. A horn toting Kit looked like she was about to perform a very public lap dance for a delighted, and equally sloshed (and horn holding), Ned to the tune of the wedding party hit “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” by the Brave Companions. Several guests had their phones out, hooting the bride and groom on, and Brienne resigned herself to a 4K replay on Ravenbook tomorrow. 

Her eyes slid over to Jaime, curious to see what he would think. He looked amused and directed her to check out Tommen on the opposite side of the dance floor. 

“Ree’s going to eat him alive,” she commented as Tommen looked equally terrified and aroused when Sansa’s oldest girl plastered herself all over him. She’d been watching them all week and had a hunch that they’d leave this party for a song reenactment of their own.

“If she wasn’t the spitting image of her mother, I’d be certain she was Margaery’s,” Jaime laughed. 

Brienne missed that sound. It was genuine, light, and carefree. It tugged and plucked at her wound up heartstrings. She’d worked so hard to prepare herself for seeing him again, but their twenty-five years of separation had done little. Maybe if he’d been angry at how long he’d had to go before Kit would reach out to him to meet on Tarth for her wedding week, it might have been easier to brush off any residual feelings. Jaime was not. He’d been genial from the beginning. The only friction, if it could be called that, was his continued insistence that he help pay for the wedding but even that was a pleasant insistence to help out.

From his first interaction with Kit at the Sunday family clambake to the ceremony and reception, he’d been nothing but pleasant and civil with her. And he was absolutely enamored with his youngest child. He hadn’t tried to bring up either time in Winterfell and only brought up Kit, his children, and his work when they were near each other for placid small talk. It was all going along extremely well and yet Brienne could not relax, she couldn’t stop waiting for something to go wrong now that he was here.

“I was hoping we could talk,” Jaime said, breaking the quiet spell between the two. There was a rhythmic thud starting on the ground near their feet. Brienne looked down instead of looking at him and noticed the heel of his shoe sole was tapping against the ground in a discordant beat. His knee started to bounce up and down.

“What’s it now?” she sighed, “The DJ? The videographer? Sansa and I already settled it.”

Jaime gave her a measured look.

“Wench, you know I’m not here to talk about the bill.” 

She shook her head. “Don’t call me that,” she said, severely. She got up from her chair. “Thanks for the drink. That reminds me that I should check in with the bartender.”

Jaime jumped up. “Brienne,” he huffed, “I’ve been treating you with kid gloves all week. I gave you space at the rehearsal last night and then today because I understood how important Kit’s wedding is, but you can’t seriously expect us not to talk about this.”

Brienne pursed her lips. “It would be easier for us if you didn’t.”

“Easier for who?” he asked, waving a hand between them. “It doesn’t make it easy if we don’t talk.”

Brienne stepped past him. “I’m not doing this with you again.”

Jaime released a deep exhale. 

“It’s a little late for that,” he called after her. “I was hoping we’d get to talk yesterday morning but we never got to have _a_ proper conversation because _someone_ decided to leave before I woke up.”

Brienne was thankful everyone had vacated this area of tables for the dance floor so that there were no witnesses when she blushed. But not too far off some of Kit’s friends watched them curiously. Everyone was clearly interested in whatever her shared history with Jaime was. After it became known among the guests that small town, island rose Kit Tarth was actually the child of one of the wealthiest men in the Six Kingdoms, friends and distant family were eager for further details. But no one outside Sansa, not Kit, not Margaery, not the rest of the Starks, knew. And Sansa and Brienne were not willing to divulge details. 

Brienne released an annoyed exhale and looked back at him. “Fine, follow me.” She hurried them out of the view of the celebrating couple, out of the sight of nosy guests, and past the observing eye of the knowing few who looked at them with some sort of expectation. She brought him to the unlit, cordoned off gardens of Evenfall, and he followed her, hovering like an impatient puppy at her heels. She stopped abruptly when they reached her mother’s old hibiscus garden. She whipped around to face him. Jaime stumbled back. A nighttime breeze caught in his shirt, rippling under his shirt and exaggerating his step back.

“Why won’t you leave this alone?” she hissed, trying to make herself look looming and menacing.

Jamie made a grumbled complaint under his breath. “I love you,” he declared, deadpan and apropos of nothing. 

Brienne’s jaw dropped. “ _Excuse me?_ ” 

“I love you,” Jaime repeated, briefly looking as if he might enjoy seeing how much he’d shocked her. “I never stopped.”

“You can’t mean that! You don’t know me,” Brienne countered, feeling half dizzy and half breathless from the whiplash of Jaime’s declaration. “It’s been too long. I’ve changed! You’ve changed!”

“I’ve had a week to see you’re still everything I fell in love with,” he argued, “I know I’ll fall in love with all the new things about you that I haven’t learned yet.”

“You’re insane,” she declared, backing away. 

“Wait.” He stepped toward her, holding a hand up like he was approaching a skittish animal. “Please listen to me.”

“Jaime,” she warned. She warily watched him. The breeze continued to dance around them, picking strands of her hair up and causing them to glint as they refracted moonlight.

He stopped, mesmerized by the vision of her cast in luminescence. “Did you know I dream of you?” he confessed in earnest. “Even after all these years, you still visit me from time to time when I sleep. And when I wake, I hate myself for breaking your heart.” 

Brienne pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to revisit Winterfell and revisit those experiences in the frozen North. But her mind disregarded her and she flashed into those dark memories. And despite the warm summer air, Brienne turned cold as if she was back in Winterfell, and the chill was seeping into her bones.

“I let you disappear from my life to make up for how I wronged you,” Jaime continued. “And I know it was the right thing to do, but every time I think about it, it feels like I made a mistake.” She watched his hand ball into a fist at his side. “Brienne, there’s never been anyone else for me.”

Once upon a time, Brienne had hoped to hear such ardent words from Jaime but he’d firmly shown her she wasn’t enough. “Why are you talking to me like a Hallmark card?” she asked, “Is this about Kit?”

“Kit?” Jaime looked at her, incredulously. “Why the Seven would it be about Kit?” he muttered. “This is about you.”

“Why?” Brienne pressed him. 

Jaime rubbed a hand down his face, “Because you’re worth going head-to-head with your willful bullheadedness until you hear what I’m literally spelling out for you.”

“What about Cersei?” she reminded him, invoking the specter. 

“There is no Cersei. There hasn’t been for years.”

Brienne’s mouth dropped open into a wide “O” of surprise. “Why? When?”

“I was different after the second time in Winterfell,” Jaime admitted. “Realizing what I lost with you and Kit...it forced me to confront everything that led me to that point and I couldn’t be what Cersei wanted anymore once I was back. Eventually, she ran off with Osmund Kettleback and I got custody of the kids. I’ve tried to reach out to her, but she’s virtually gone. I’ve heard of her appearing on the arm of some billionaire or another at society events but she’s never contacted us and the children gave up on her years ago.

“I’m sorry,” Brienne said, relieved to know she might never see Cersei again. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Good riddance works.” 

“Oh.” Brienne was surprised by his vehemence.

Jaime looked at her, and stepped closer, pulling one of her hands into his. “I know I have no right to ask it of you, but I can’t have you not understand. I didn’t bring you back to my room for a drunk romp, I brought you back because I’ve wanted you for so long. And I thought you understood my intentions until I woke up and you were gone. I’ve missed you all this time. I just need you to understand and I want to know what it will take. If I have to climb the Eyrie barehand, backpack the furthest edge of the True North, walk the Wall coast-to-coast, I will. Let me prove to you how serious I am.”

Brienne swallowed. She rarely thought of it these days, but every time she turned to those days in Winterfell, she felt herself sink under it’s emotional weight. But this man before he wasn’t him and that had to be worth exploring at the very least. So very softly, she whispered, “Okay.” She squeezed the hand that held hers right back. 

Jaime grinned and tugged her closer to him, asking her a question that went in one ear and out the other.

She searched his face, dazed to be this close. “What did you say?”

Jaime chuckled, “Don’t play coy with me, wench. How about it? One dance. I’ll go easy on you tonight but tomorrow I’m turning up the Lannister charm.”

Brienne sputtered. Her mouth opening and closing in a pantomime of a beached fish.

Jaime waved a hand, “Okay, got it. No Lannister charm tomorrow. Monday then. So how about it. One ‘no-stakes’ dance?”

“I suppose there’s no harm in that,” she agreed.

“Of course there isn’t,” Jaime beamed, but his face wavered, seeming to jump back and forth with the earnest and passionate soft underbelly he had exposed to her and the charismatic front he was choosing to fall back on in the hopes it would make her more comfortable, “but there’s no harm in dancing all night with me if you feel so inclined. With the exception of our daughter, Myrcella, and Tommen, if Ree Stark ever lets him go, my dance card is reserved exclusively for you.”

Brienne blushed. “One dance,” she reiterated, “and then we’ll see where we go from there.” 

Jaime’s face lit up and she remembered how good it had actually felt to fall in love with him in the ruins of the Stark’s ancient castle. Perhaps it could be easier now. He held up their hands, fixing their hold so that her hand was being held delicately in it like a princess’. He leaned forward and kissed it. “I can work with that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted 10/7/2020
> 
> The fact I can post this through my phone because my Wifi is terrible right now is crazy. God I love technology. 
> 
> -Vira xx
> 
> PS-I eventually got to a point (during heavy revision six lol) where I’d been revising this for so long I couldn’t tell you what was right and what was wrong. If you have any writing advice for this one, let me know! I’m always trying to learn. :)


	11. Modern AU: An Agreement between Friends

“Well for one,” Jaime smirked, waving his hand between her, him, and the bed inbetween, “I don’t know what  _ your _ Septa taught you, but sex doesn’t happen when you're standing five feet apart.”

On the other side of the bed, Brienne scoffed. “I know how sex works, Jaime!”

Her best friend raised his eyebrows. “Do you?” he challenged.

She glared.

Jaime held his hands up in a mock surrender. “All right, Ms. Feisty. Let's save the spice for later.” He kicked his shoes off and kneeled onto the bed. “You can come closer, you know.”

Brienne bit her lip, looking away. Unconsciously, she gathered her hands in front of her and wrung them. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

“If that’s really what you want,” Jaime said, “then we don’t have to do anything. 

“But,” he moved towards her, “if you’re saying that because you’re scared…”  _ Shuffle. Shuffle.  _ “Then don’t because I won’t hurt you. I promise.”  _ Shuffle. Shuffle.  _ “So I have to know.” Brienne opened her eyes in surprise when she felt his warm breath settling over her lips. “Is that really what you want?”

“No.”

Without giving her a chance to second guess herself, Jaime leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her and capturing her in a kiss.

“You can touch me,” Jaime murmured as he lifted his mouth from hers to press kisses on her face. First to her forehead, then to her eyelids, her cheekbones, and to her jawline where he broke off to kiss the long lines of her neck. 

“Where?” she whimpered, bunching his shirt in her hands. 

Jaime groaned, the feel of her nails scraping the skin under the cloth a more welcome sensation then he had expected. “Wherever you want,” he muttered. “My hair. My arms. My ass.  _ Anywhere _ .” He gasped the last part out and yanked her closer so that she tumbled on top of him. 

“Jaime!” she yelped.

He laughed as he laid underneath her on the bed. Golden hair spilled around him and mixed with the flaxen hair that had fallen out of her ponytail. “Don’t you want me, Bri? Cause you’re gonna have to come get it. I can’t do all the work.”

So she did. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Published 24/7/2020
> 
> The self-assigned prompt was to write whatever came to mind while listening to the ten songs I liked from new Taylor Swift album (the 1, cardigan, exile, seven, august, this is me trying, illicit affairs, Betty, peace, hoax) on one run through and my second time hearing the songs. Once I was done, I couldn't add any new words during the grammar edit, only move words around or remove them. (So basically I was just screwing around 😂) 
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> -Vira xx


	12. Modern AU: Falling In Love-Ish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe it's time to take Sansa's advice and hire that handyman she knows to help her fix up this hellhole of an inn. 
> 
> Vague Falling Inn Love AU. Only vaguely. I wouldn't think too hard on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Needed to clear my head from a WIP that keeps on going, so I wrote this in a timed 30 minutes just to see what I could produce. Heh.

Brienne was ready to cry by the time she ripped back some of the baseboards to discover corroded pipes and a completely molded first-floor ceiling by the end of the day.

When she’d heard she’d won an inn out in the far edges of the Reach, where the land was green and fertile and the ocean near and calm, she’d quit her lousy job, taken the inheritance her father had left, and dropped everything to move out to her new windfall.

It was proving to be anything but.

“Rough day?” the waitress Sansa asked when Brienne walked into the only diner in town. Brienne still had her suspicions about the young woman, there was something a little too high-classed about her appearance for this rural part of the region, from her tailored clothes to her crisp articulations, Brienne had had some questions about whether the woman had run here from somewhere, as she’d very well done after things imploded with Hyle and his group of dickbag friends. Sometimes when she’d come around the diner for a meal and conversation, she’d try to piece out Sansa Snow’s story, but today she chose to ditch her poor attempts at sleuthing. She needed an ear to hear her while she groaned about what a shithole the inn was turning out to be. 

“I can’t do this,” she moaned. “That inn is nothing more than a house of cards waiting to fall down and I literally dropped everything to come here.” She went on and Sansa listened to her patiently, nodding where appropriate and making noises when it looked like Brienne needed affirmation.

“Do you want the number for the guy I know?” Sansa asked. She’d been insisting for weeks that she knew the perfect person to help Brienne fix up the inn, but Brienne felt she had a right to be suspicious, Sansa had proven to be someone who veered quite a bit on the overly self-reliant.

“Does he have any credentials?” she parried, Sansa had proved to be something of a whipsmart when it came to figuring out answers to solutions without relying on experts but Brienne still had her reservations and very nearly rebuilding a whole structure from the ground up was one she wanted to be done well and right the first time.

Sansa rolled her eyes. “He can do it all, Bri. He’s the perfect all-around handyman. He’ll even charge you less on big projects if you pay in cash. You know he did all the electrical for the house I built?

Brienne peered at her funny, not realizing Sansa had gone so far as to build her own house too. “Is that even legal?”

Sansa shrugged. “The house inspector said it was all up to par so who am I to complain? He was really sweet and even built me a little storage studio out back. And he got the _chicest_ exterior walls. Burnt wood! It’s sustainable, cheap, and goes so well with the white linings I’ve used to frame the windows and door.”

“Maybe…” Brienne sighed, knowing full well, she only had a limited amount of savings, even after her inheritance, and she couldn’t afford all the trade experts she’d need to fix the inn up, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to meet him.” 

“That’s the spirit!” Sansa cheered and jumped forward, crushing Brienne into a hug. Brienne grimaced, feeling uncomfortable, and tried to edge away, “Nope!” Sansa said, popping the “p” with intention, “I’m gonna get you used to human contact yet. You wait and see!”

* * *

The next morning Brienne was walking around the house in an attempt to inventory all the aesthetic damage she could do handle easily when she heard a gasp behind her.

“Good gods, you’re a woman!”

“ _ Excuse me?” _ she exclaimed. She whipped around, freezing on the spot. She’d never in a million years have foreseen that she’d be met by the Warrior at 8 AM on a Saturday morning. The god before her was all golden-haired, from his head of shiny curls to his close-cut beard. He was shapely if his tight, worn t-shirt and outline of thick thigh and calf muscles through his worn jeans indicated anything. 

“I…” the man faltered, eyes looking somewhere below her. “Who even has those sorts of legs…” the man was muttering under his breath, “Goddamn Sansa sticking her nose where she shouldn’t.”

“Excuse me,” Brienne insisted, pulling herself up to her full height, “What are you doing on my property, sir.”

The stranger startled as if surprised to realize she was closer now and dragged his head up, eyes going along her body, and taking his time to meet hers, he bit his lip, looking positively devilish, and for a moment Brienne thought of pouncing him on the ground right then and there and having her way with him, seeing if she could find all the ways she could make him tick. 

“Jaime Hill,” he introduced, sticking out his hand to shake hers, “Self-taught electrician, plumber, landscaper, I can provide all the services you need. In. Every. Single. Way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted 23/9/2020


	13. Future/Interstellar AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let her go. Interstellar AU.

“You know,” Myrcella says, voice old and raspy from the decades she spent waiting for him in the cryogenic freezer, “Dr. Tarth made it to planet five. Dr. Baratheon was right, but she was too late to do anything but bury him. ”

Jaime lifts his head from the glass window. “She’s all alone, daddy,” Myrcella tells him, childlike words strange when coming out of the mouth of an old woman, “she doesn’t think anyone is coming. ” She doesn’t say it but Jaime hears her. The implication.

“But I did all this to get back to you,” he insists, but now that the idea is there he is torn. Whose loyalty does he hold to first?

“And you did.” Myrcella motions him forward and he takes a seat beside her hospital bed. “I lived a wonderful life. I loved and was loved and I understood, even if it might have wavered at times, I understood in the end how much you love me.”

“Myrcella,” he chokes out, leaning over and bowing over her shoulder, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I know.” Her bony hand strokes against his hair. A familiar soothing motion that reminds him of when he was a little boy tucked in beside his mother. Myrcella is Joanna in all the best ways. “Go,” she urges him, “no parent needs to watch their child die. My children, their children, and their children’s children will be here to see me off. Go.”

“Where?” he croaks, leaning into the palm of a hand that rests on his cheek. He wants to go into his brain, into its very core when neurons make memories and he wants to carve the synaptic pathways that will allow him to forever return to this, to the feel of her hand, to the sound of her voice, to the sparkle in her green eyes, this last time in her presence.

“She’s out there,” Myrcella whispers, mournful. “She’s alone. Setting up camp, all alone in her separate galaxy, resigned herself to the greater duty. Perhaps as we speak she’s getting ready for the long sleep.”

She pulls back, pressing against his chest so he sits back up. “Go,” she whispers, “go.”

Jaime looks down at his daughter. His wonderful daughter who somehow still loves him and smiles at him with the contentment of a life well-lived, Her family waiting just outside to go to her, and stay beside her when she finally ventures off into the long night. He leans forward and presses a kiss against her forehead, the same way he used to do when she was a child, but now there are wrinkles where it was once supple and smooth, dry and cool where it once was warm. “I love you,” he tells her, voice heavy with loss he can never fully fathom.

“I know,” she says, and leans back in her mountain of pillows, smiling softly as he gets up and gives her one last look before turning away. He can’t look back as he strides out or he’ll lose his heart and nerve all over again, but there’s hope. Myrcella reminded him. Brienne is out there, and she thinks she has no one, but she has him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something I found while looking through old stuff.


End file.
